An emotion I wasn't expecting

 Life can be fascinating. Emotions can surprise you. Sometimes we spend so much time sitting in a certain feeling it seems that is all we can feel. Certainly I'm referring to myself but I know I'm not alone.

And one emotion - a feeling if you will - that hit me hard a few days after I arrived back on the east coast is homesickness. Which caught me more off-guard than I can find words to express.

It wasn't home for long but the Bay Area, specifically a little spot tucked into the Peninsula, was where I called home for almost a year and a half. It was designed to be for much, much longer. But not unlike the time with Oliver that came to an end - though that was far more anticipated - my time there was limited. 

I miss two things. 

I don't know that it would be fair to list one first and then the other, as if one is more important.

No photo represents both better. 

I spent close to three months counting down the days (literally, one by one) til I was to get on a plane and fly for the final time to the east coast. And I didn't feel sad about it. I wasn't thinking about what I was leaving behind. I was exclusively focused on what I was moving toward. 

And then the last week came.

The way my school treated me from the moment I got a phone call that changed my whole life to the moment I walked off campus for the final time just over a week ago has been nothing short of extraordinary. And without realizing it, the people I'm closest to became the second thing I came to see would be hard to walk away from.

The other is sunshine. But while the people in my life on the east coast will now fill my days with memories, joy, comfort, company, and allow me to feel much less lonely, it was also the people there that filled me up.

I didn't deeply connect to how much they were also serving as sunshine. So perhaps the more appropriate thing to say is I'm missing the sunshine, and it encompasses all of what I'm at a loss for. 

(people of the east coast don't fret, I'm fully aware the sun makes plenty of appearances - in fact today is the first day of rain since my arrival). 

It's a metaphor, yes.

(but also it is f*ing cold here)

The day the photograph above, with the rainbow, was taken was a big event day for our admission team. Hundreds of people were on campus to meet us, to learn about the school, and to (in some cases) make big decisions about whether they should apply for admission for their daughter.

It poured. 

I don't mean it rained. I mean more water fell from the sky that morning than had probably fallen in months. 

Talk about inconvenient when it comes to an open campus where one is required to be outdoors to move from building to building.

I cannot take any credit for the photo with the rainbow. But someone was willing to go outside as soon as the rain paused. And what they captured is one of the most beautiful ways, without words, I can describe the school I have been privileged and proud to work for.